User Interview Techniques

If you had five minutes with a user of your product or service what would you ask him or her? Would you even know how to approach that person? Or who to ask? What makes a good interview anyway? Interviewing is both an art and a science, but often, both are overlooked. Taking time to ask the right questions reveals insights into the experiences we design. Everyone is has a story to tell, and everyone has insight that can inform your product, website, or service experience. But if we don’t ask good questions, we’ll lose the valuable input coming directly from the people we’re designing for.

Whether formal or informal, on a shoestring or a big budget, this workshop will give you concrete strategies for conducting interviews to get results you can use. Learn strategies for asking good questions, how to listen (more challenging than you think), get interview technology you need, and find out what the experts are doing in the field. Walk away with practical experience you can use the very same day to inform the products you’re creating.

Who should attend?

Whether you’re a designer, a developer, a project manager, a researcher, a writer, or all of the above, it’s your job to understand how to ask good questions. You’ll find it valuable whether you already talk to your users and want to know more, you’re flummoxed by the whole process, or even if you just hire and pay the people who will be asking good questions.

What will you take away?

• How to invite; the art of the ask
• How to choose who to interview; the science of screeners
• How to ask the right questions to get to the core of user insight
• Learn an arsenal of question types for every situation
• Learn to be silent to let the interestingness of people come out
• How to conduct interviews on a budget (or for very very little)
• How to avoid writing giant reports and still report insights

Everyone will walk away with concrete approaches for making the fluffy tangible and the invisible visible that they can implement the very same day.